1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a reusable cartridge for manufacturing a skinless sausage, having a tubular middle section and at least one adjoining sealing end made of a flexible synthetic material
2. Description of Related Art
Manufacturing skinless sausages is already known, in that sausage meat is infected into an endless cellulose gut which is then twisted off into lengths of the finished sausages at corresponding distances. After the ripening process the sausages, with the exception of frying sausages, are smoked, cooked and cooled, and the cellulose gut is then peeled off. The peeling process of the cellulose gut is carried out by hand and accordingly represents a time-intensive procedural step which is not entirely safe from the hygiene point of view. In addition, the cellulose guts can be used once only, so that during manufacture of the sausages a large quantity of used cellulose gut accrues which for the most part has to be disposed of and represents a high cost factor in sausage manufacturing.
Sausages cannot be manufactured fully automatically by the necessary procedural steps when carried out by hand.
Attempts have been made in the past to manufacture skinless sausages with the aid of cartridges. Here, a separate cartridge is provided for each subsequent sausage, into which the sausage mass is introduced.
A process of this type is described in DE-OS 25 23 506, for instance.
The essential problem which restricts the use of such cartridges for the manufacture of sausages lies in the expensive structure and complicated handling of the sealing caps. On the one hand, the sealing caps are to seal tightly, and on the other hand they are to enable the sausage meat to expand in the cartridge.
A cartridge is already known from DE-OS 41 34 249 which is equipped with a closure sleeve which is expansive to construct. In this connection, the closure sleeve is provided directly with a closure device which tightly seals an opening after filling. The sealing cap is connected solidly to the sleeve both during and after the filling process. As with the other known prior art, the sealing cap has to be set manually on both ends of the cartridge and later removed for cleaning the mould.